Archive for July, 2012

“hus af lys” (Danish for “house of light”) is a single family residence located on the northside of the island of St. Croix. This contemporary residence uses sleek geometries and details to enhance the spectacular views towards Hams Bluff and the Caribbean Sea. St. Croix, the largest of the US Virgin Islands, is divided geographically into former plantation estates established during Danish Colonial rule. The Crucian landscape is dotted with predominantly stone monuments of sugar mills, smoke stacks and factory buildings, executed by highly skilled enslaved African craftsmen, which still stand almost intact today.

Both the architectural and site designs strictly respect the project purpose and the site green context characterised by the touch of a considerable morphological promontory featuring grown trees, shrubs and grass-covered areas sloping down from the Černá Hora massif to the town. The overall volume of the hall is reduced as much as possible by fragmenting into several structural modules softly modelled into organic curved lines so that the shell of the building is visually linked to the Černá Hora slope. The grass-covered areas smoothly merge into the metal-sheet-covered roof. Different volume modules of the hall meet in a shared rounded top from which they continue sloping down in the form of a shed roof towards the west border of the site. The intervention of the structure is minimised especially from all sides visible from the town. The excavated soil has been reused for terrain modelling and rooftop fills reducing the hall operation and energy costs. The project has been designed on “landscape architecture” principles and meets all the parameters of an energy-saving building.

On a narrow lot with a mildly sloping incline in the northern Athenian suburb of Krioneri, the Cascading U House positions two independent dwellings one on top of the other, for the owners and their daughter.

On numerous occasions architecture is the result of the negotiation conducted between key interlocutors (in this case, the architects and proposals) and the different types of space involved: the original space to act on, the determining and judging outer space, and especially, the new space to be generated.

In 2004 Future Systems won an international competition to design a new museum in Modena, Italy. Dedicated to motor racing legend and entrepreneur Enzo Ferrari (1898 – 1988), the museum comprises exhibition spaces within the early nineteenth century house where the motor racing giant was born and raised, and its adjoining workshop, as well as a separate, newly constructed exhibition building.

When sports architecture firm Populous was selected to design Aviva Stadium, a more than $575 million soccer and rugby stadium in Dublin, Ireland, it had to ensure that the unified form of the building’s concept was maintained from design development through to construction. With such emphasis placed on maintaining the purity of the original concept, functional considerations were made to serve the building’s form.

The single floor residential home made of cedar wood was built on a slightly sloping property with direct access and spectacular view to the lake. In the course of time, the patina of the facade is intended to adjust to its natural surroundings. Thus the building discreetly takes a backstage, without disrupting the lake view.

The ambitious plan by Madrid’s mayor Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón to submerge a section of the M30 ring motorway immediately adjacent to the old city centre within a tunnel was realised within a single term of office. The city undertook infrastructure measures over a total length of 43 kilometres, six of them along the banks of the River Manzanares, at a total cost of six billion Euro. West 8 together with a group of renowned architects from Madrid, united under the name MRIO arquitectos led by Ginés Garrido Colomero designed the master plan for Madrid RIO.

THE MARTIANS HAVE LANDED And they’ve set up their very own embassy in inner city Sydney! The new embassy was designed by LAVA, with partners Will O’Rourke and The Glue Society, as a fusion of a whale, a rocket and a time tunnel, an immersive space of oscillating plywood ribs brought to life by red planet light and sound projections.